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Episode 208: Arrogant or cocky people, Epidemic of anxiety, Evo psych of suicide
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dr. Lila I want to start with a thank you for all that you do life has been making more sense ever since I started listening to the podcast my question today has to do with arrogant and cocky people I have a brother-in-law who is mildly successful makes decent money but he thinks he's the most intelligent and successful person he constantly finds ways to brag about how well-off he is and how he is just better than everyone how does one deal with the person like this I don't spend much time with him and I'm polite and when we have family functions it's hard for me to not get upset about his comments I've heard other people suggest that it could be a problem with me and that I'm being insecure about my own successes and taking it out on someone who feels that they are winning out life I don't know how I feel about that train of thought given that my husband and I have a more successful marriage and make more money what can I do to improve my feelings if it is a manifestation of any issues I may have what can I do to improve I can't wait to hear your opinion thank you no you don't have issues the know this is just a disagreeable human and that is also extroverted enough loudmouth enough about it that he is pushing his his belief that he's superior in in everybody's face and this is of course gonna make us uncomfortable the there the that sort of self advertising not only indicates that they're difficult to deal with in terms of negotiations because they think they deserve more out of a deal but it's also true that that we feel them sort of pushing their PR in the village and that maybe some people will believe it and they will somehow gain cachet by that kind of self advertisement and that this is this is yeah increasing the competitive process in the village for who has the most cachet and you feel like you you should have more cachet you're actually more successful more stable more reasonable in terms of your negotiating with people in other words you're a nicer person and now we cease this sort of pushy arrogant person pushing to the front of the line and it's going to make us uncomfortable because he's signaling to other people that he's superior to you and if he thinks so then that that is a potential fish trick where other people could be reading his mind and saying well there must be a reason he thinks that and that starts mobilizing you to start to feel competitive with him and try to essentially reorganize people's thinking including ours so just by asking that question you were sure to say listen my husband and I are more successful than he is our marriage is more successful so he's actually not more successful and yet this is what's coming across in these social situations and it's uncomfortable yeah it is uncomfortable so no this is not your problem this is just the fact that you're a different personality essentially competing for social esteem and some trough of humanity where we've got a loudmouth there that is self promoting so I would say no it's not your problem however it's obviously a location we don't want to be in very often and we want to minimize our exposure to him to optimize your life so I would look at anything where he's going to be with a cost-benefit analysis and try to figure out you know why on earth were there in the first place and whether or not that's how we want to spend some hours of our life when he's around you know go to a different room and talk to somebody else that this is I look at people like this of any ilk yeah they can even be quiet and introverted but they've got that same kind of arrogance I have no interest in giving them three minutes of my time and so I see them as radioactive dr. Hawk calls it personality cancer she will stage it like yeah she'd call that guy's stage four personality cancer and our job is to just stay away so yeah nothing nothing to be done on your standpoint this is reasonable that you would feel threatened and irritated and that it would activate competitive instincts and it would be unpleasant and so that's that's how it is and so the he can go you know swimwear where he is still wanted with that attitude and you better go find somewhere else to play no no it's kind of like a different people different different basketball games so you go to one park and it's okay to hand check people and to to push them around and and just camping the key you know and it's like you go to another park and people know how to play the game properly and it's like you know what I'll just go play where people know how to play by the rules rather than then Sandlot jungle ball trolls and I've been in that situation many times where just wasn't worth playing at a place because people people see things differently about how things ought to be played so that's how I would look at this and just stay stay away from all such individuals including this guy that's a wonderful point too because you know I really love dr. dr. Hawks you know the staging the cancer because it makes me think of you know the environment is how much of this is a village dependent ie the audience that the person is gathering is this is easy to say the vulnerability in human psychology where we're any old you know extrovert disagreeable person can cajole them into you know looking at them differently or is this gonna take a certain level of IQ or certain type of personality of the audience to to essentially recognize that and also be annoyed with it yeah in other words this is a this is a swirling cauldron of free market dynamics with respect to esteem seeking and so all kinds of sales jobs and techniques and are gonna work I think we have one of the most extraordinary examples of this in American politics that you've ever seen in politics which is that I can't when I think of the contrast between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush you know it would be very hard to have seen two people that would be that their ways of doing politics what could be so different you know Mitt Romney was far more argumentative and tougher than Jeb Bush Jeb Bush is you know a very stable low-key really sort of an ordinary bureaucratic you know pretty decent sort of a good guy that's what he seemed like to me and Donald Trump is the ultimate of self-promotion I don't we've never had a presidential level candidate in the United States that had that personality amazing just complete stark contrast and I think that of the people who have a lot of agreement with Trump and like him they get a big kick out of that personality people that don't like him and disagree with them are just appalled at his at his style in the same way that this lady is is just very disturbed by her her sort of bombastic brother-in-law and so you can see the the political left for example feels like Trump is very unfair and they're really upset and he's somehow not playing by the right rules and he's not he's not you know there's no decorum etc in other words he's just playing it differently he's he's in the Park League where it's okay to hand check camp and the key and push and that's just how it is and of course the truth is is that in politics it is a free-for-all it's a total free-for-all and so who the heck knows what the best strategy is almost any probably any major political analyst that was looking at the candidate situation in 2016 probably there is not one in the United States a learning political analyst that would have said that personality and personality style is going to win that I don't think anybody would have thought that was possible so the Trump thought it was possible and some of his backers or some of the people around him thought it was possible his wife had seen that that personality be so successful for so long apparently she famously said to him well if he run you know she didn't want him to but she said if you run you'll win and it's like because she had seen that personality and its success with so many things that she just thought God you you'll probably win the damn thing and I would not have personally thought so I would have thought that that that personality would have rubbed so many people so wrong so so often that there's no way impossible that that could have been successful so the the truth is is that life and politics is a swirling cauldron of free for all and for my money and the time of my life the whole thing is fine people or dr. Hawk has a way of saying this think of yourself as essentially a fixed quantity you can't transform your personality you think of yourself as the kind of a plant you are and what kind of life you have is where that potted plant you know is set so go find the location in in the house or the office or wherever it is you know essentially the environment the social ecology potentials of your life go find the place and walk that potted plant over there and set it where it's got the right amount of light and the right amount of water and you know and the right environment around it where there aren't a bunch of people smoking and let's just settle right in and enjoy your existence rather than trying to transform the environment around you or you know change the people around you or their opinions of anything forget it just put yourself in the best possible circumstances in terms of your social ecology and let the rest of the world go wherever it's going that's wonderful thank you and a virtual thank you for dr. Hawk for that insight as well this leads you directly into our next it leads next to entire leads right next to it right into our next question which is about the epidemic disposal epidemic of anxiety today so hmm this is directed for dr. Lyle and dr. Hawk but since you're only here dr. Lyle will just take your answer dear doctors I would like to understand this epidemic of anxiety that is happening these days what is happening I have five children two of which are stepchildren they're all thriving successful socially contributing adults ranging from twenty to thirty seven two of them are doctors four of our children and one daughter-in-law are all suffering from high levels of anxiety two of them are even taking medication for it I have taken medication for several years now and I see it in I'm sorry I have taught meditation for several years now and I see it in the classrooms with children even as young as kindergarten saying that they can't turn their brains off and they are always thinking of the possible outcomes often worst-case scenarios of every situation they suffer with being able to fall asleep have trouble letting go and just plain-old relaxing their anxieties are different among them the girls seem to get anxious about general life situations and the boys are more anxious about every ache and pain in their bodies being some sign of a horrible disease I'm so confused as to what's going on in this world that so many people have anxiety and how as a parent I can help them I've tried to introduce various meditation techniques and believed it's helped live helped a little bit but who listens to their mom anyway in any input into what might be the cause of this and how they can get rid of it without medication I love you so so much I'm going back to school 57 to get agree to the other degree in psychology first of all there's a lot of pieces to this that are you know probably worth reflecting on and that is that this is you know theory based perception so once you are looking for something you start to see it everywhere so the truth of the matter is is that there isn't an increase in anxiety today the the anxiety levels today are no different than they were 20 30 40 50 and a thousand years ago it's all the same so all you're really looking at is you're you're looking at high conscientiousness so and wedded to is anxiety is more evident when high conscientiousness is wedded to instability just natural instability so those two personality characteristics are are what will drive what we were gonna call anxiety so it's no surprise she's got two kids that are M DS and parent Li bunch of little people in that family that are better high conscientiousness and so it's no surprise that that we should find we wouldn't be surprised to find generally higher levels of anxiety inside that gene pool strangely enough also including perhaps some adopted kids wouldn't be surprising that you could get some in there too that doesn't mean that anything got learned because it didn't get learned these are innate characteristics to people so hmm I wouldn't be making generalizations about boys and girls when people start saying things like that usually they're talking about one case that they've seen or two maybe three probably not okay and once they start to formulate an opinion about a pattern they don't look for disconfirming evidence so there is no pattern that boys are more apt to have aches and pains and worry about those and girls are more worried about something else that isn't going to be the case so so all you have here is a highly conscientious individual herself or she wouldn't have been teaching meditation who who is now sensitized to the fact that a bunch of people around her are struggling with a lot of anxiety to the point of I guess using medications which is of course a mistake and she's trying to figure out what can you do about it answer nothing you're looking at personality characteristics and so these these personality characteristics will not change the person's anxiety will go up and down according to the local ecological inputs that are impacting that nervous system so there's a few things that are a good idea to do if you're an anxious adult exercise and save money okay those are two things that can can knock down the anxious persons just general level of agitation and it turns out a lot of them already do that so so after that it was simple the advices dr. Lao it's like it doesn't have to be so complicated no it's a exercise save money to try to do a meditation class and see if that if you if your nervous system bites on it and if that if that won't fly you know you're out of luck one of the one of the things a strange concept for some people to consider not most people but it certainly is true for a lot of highly anxious people particularly if they're very bright and they have a lot of options with respect to their work and that is try to be underemployed okay don't try to get the highest job or the highest paying job or the most responsible job that requires the most level of responsibility in fact try to be a the best fish in in the aquarium so and if you in these situations this can reduce your anxiety because you know that you are more valuable in other words what you want to be is underpaid if a highly anxious person is underpaid their nervous system will is is still subject to running computations on on their situation with respect to their environment so if you imagine the following what's happening with a highly anxious person a highly conscientious / anxious person is that they are imagining the worst-case scenario but their imaginations of the worst-case scenario are not an all-or-nothing thing it's on a continuum and it's based on the the evidence that is coming into the system so you know if there if there are a 90th percentile employee and there's a 10% layoff there and they're anxious enough to believe that they may get the axe okay so that's while well there's a low conscientious person that said that that's at the 12th percentile but it isn't even sweating it okay so this is distantly so the end of this is just how it is okay now but the thing is is if you yourself are some 95th percentile you know very anxious highly conscientious individual then it's a good idea to be to be fancier than your job title or your income in other words knowing that the other people on the other side of the table know that they're getting quite a deal by having you be there you may you may be essentially have a steady stream of cues from that environment from your boss and the organization that it's like wow we're sure lucky to have you we're sure lucky to have you that's the kind of feedback that you want to see where you know oh boy am I secure so that's uh that's one one way to look at the problem most people don't need to ever consider such a thing but but some people you know depending upon who they are if there's enough natural instability and enough high high conscientiousness that they're living under a lot of internal tension about how it could all go wrong and they could lose their position and that it's all going to be a disaster that's a good time to get underemployed so if you could be the head of the ophthalmology surgery department don't take it don't go for it this is how you beat your gins just be a run-of-the-mill ophthalmologist in the department don't look to be the chief even though everybody says oh but your work is so good and you're so well organized you work so hard and you put in more hours than everybody else all right you know you should be chief okay when the head of a hospital comes and says you should be chief you're the you're the most decorated hardest-working best record at cetera metal we want you to be chief don't do it okay that's how you beat your genes right there don't bite for tube too much of the sandwich just back off so that's a that's another little aspect to think about when it comes to managing your life there's you know one way to get super-anxious is to get lucky to get overpaid and essentially over rewarded that's a great way to you know stay up late in the middle of the night night after night thinking about how on earth you're going to keep that position another way to do it is to be underemployed at which point wow what a position the power okay like in two seconds I could replace this job because I'm underemployed so obviously most people the right move is to be right in the middle of appropriate cost-benefit analysis but if you happen to be you know on this neurotic side of the curve give yourself a break see what it feels like to be more in a position of power that might help you and dr. Lai would you have would you suspect a similar similar thing can be done as far as relationship romantic relationships go if some yeah just as a naturally anxious person with regards to romance yes I do in other words for for people that are naturally anxious probably you know not a bad idea to to be headed for somewhere where you feel like you're where the other person has given you a lot of signals that they feel like they're over rewarded okay that's good see so a lot of people that are very sensitive about this and and worst case scenario mongers etc they're sometimes their best situation is to be in a situation where the other person is is barri into them where it feels like maybe the other person is getting quote the better end of the deal as long as you're into it it's if you are that personality better to be under awarded than / awarded and I've actually seen that be helpful for people with that those personalities in in my own practice and in my own life it can settle down the anxiety and make an anxious person feel considerably more secure and happier wonderful wonderful all right well our next question it's well you know what I get I have a question about this that I'm rolling around in my head so so let me let me let me kind of wind out and see if I if it makes any sense and my thinking was if someone's extremely anxious you know to the extent that it might have to do with that they are not being as competitive as they could be and they just need to do some hard work you know to what extent would would you recommend that hey they got get to the fundamentals and really get to work and really improve their position oh yeah that's a little bit different so that's a normally you have achievement motivation that is driving people to do that anyway so that that's not normally highly anxious conscientious people are not in the situation that you're talking about there are however there could be people that could be ego trapped and are procrastinating and are also you know sufficiently anxious that they are that they are and they have enough of an ego trap dynamic that's taking place that that is what they need to do and so what they do need to do is they need to break a problem into fundamentals start to do the steps and look for the what happens to their self-esteem as a result of making diligent efforts and that will reduce your anxiety because the anxiety can spin in in some individuals as they are essentially ego trapped and and essentially frozen up and as a result of that that anxiety can just you know sit there for a period of time at a very high state where they're effectively paralyzed so of course if that's the situation then we want to the solution to that situation is always the solution to the ego trap solution to the ego trap whether the ego trap is being sprung from our knowledge of outside people's overestimation of our abilities or whether or not that's just simply internal to the internal audience simply has a overly high estimation of our abilities in either case the solution is the same and that is to quietly break down the problem into its fundamentals and begin working the fundamentals put the hours in that are involved in improvement whatever that is and I mean chopping carrots or it might be you know going and getting some balsa wood from Home Depot so that we can learn you know we can work on our carving or it may be getting our Chi back out and going and paddling whatever it is that we're feeling intimidated about or getting in front of a you know getting our pen out and trying to write haiku whatever it is it's the effort that you put in that is diligent that there's nothing like a couple hours of diligent effort for the internal audience to observe that we're actually trying as best we can and once it sees that it starts to not only recalibrate its expectations but it starts to feed the esteem meter positive signals of steam not glorious and not loud but quietly saying well Ben good job I I see that you're working hard and you're doing the best you can that's what the internal audience will say to you through the esteem meter and that will dial down anxiety okay so because the expectations are being appropriately modified as the internal audience watches your progress or lack thereof it gets a sense of where you are in the learning curve or the achievement curve with respect to whatever it is that you're working on and everything settles down if a person's been frozen over into an ego trap dynamic that is a so that is one that but that's a different problem then I think the one that we were originally talking about which is just general anxiety general anxiety is not does not always in any way Teresa it's footsteps back to the ego trap most of the anxiety that anybody's dealing with with the with the type of problems that our that our questioner is asking this is absolutely sheer 100% personality it's never changing okay and so that that anxiety is dynamic its dynamic in the sense that that it will change from minute to minute an hour an hour depending upon the ecological challenges that the person is dealing with but the general level of anxiety that the individual is going to have over this lifetime will be unbelievably stable so if you're an anxious neurotic nutcase you're gonna be an anxious neurotic that case from your first birthday to your 99th it's just how it it okay that's a lot more sense yeah that's how that I got my wires crossed a little bit as far as being really specific to one particular issue because the where that was stemming from is here at the fasten escape like we people will come in and they're usually very anxious about their health in particular weight and how they look and then a few days in a few weeks and when they've lost a little bit of weight and they kind of already are feeling comfortable where they are I can just watch their anxiety reduce and you know ask a more relaxing environment or whatever it is but but mmm that that little chip calms down a little bit there's still kind of anxious in general but yeah but that part yes yeah let's look at this so let's see what what's taking place there because that's interesting no I've seen that very many times watching this process that the person comes in often very upset and really twisted up in desperate over a very common thing for people to come in with fasting even though as you know we're not we're not advertising and trying to sell the concept of water fasting to lose weight that is not the primary thing however it doesn't matter as much as we try to keep people focused on general health doesn't matter they're crawling through the door you know are very upset about their weight and they desperately want to lose weight and obviously as you know we're not going to fast people unless it's appropriate so but if it is appropriate and and weight loss is the number one you know thing that's actually on their mind in general health is ii certainly fasting them it makes sense and then we're gonna then find out they will discover that they're not a freakin nature that they're not violating the laws of thermodynamics and the fact that they've been trying to lose weight really hard for the last three months six months nine years or whatever the hell it is bottom line is sure enough when they start water fasting under supervision they start losing weight and they find out that they can tolerate it as you know Nathan and it turns out that they they might go six days or sixteen days or whatever it is and by god there's a significant change in their body morphology and when that happens what's happening is that it's increasing their perceived self-efficacy so their confidence starts to surge because they can see ok I'm not locked in by nature to some to some you know social psychological hell where I can never lose this weight there they see that oh my god it is in fact possible that is a very positive thing that happens as a result of water fasting the then however then they still you could still see some anxiety about well gee I wonder if I'm going to gain it back or I'm not sure I can do this all those kinds of things but having a big victory and seeing that their body is in fact not a fat storage machine that will fail them just at the twitch of a cheeto that this actually helps them know that ok there's that my body is subject to natural law just like I've been hearing from the people who are educating us around these issues and so what you're watching is the anxiety is dropping because the perceived self-efficacy being able to manage the problem is increasing no question yeah yeah so that you particularly if you have a highly anxious personality walking in with the issue then they can be bouncing off the walls until we see some success they see six success and now the anxiety can drop quite a bit but I would argue that that if there are pretty bouncy when they come in they're probably not naturally very calm to begin with they're probably naturally pretty conscientious and got some instability in there or we wouldn't be seeing any of that at the start it's interesting my engineering brain is always trying to calculate at what stage will their anxiety drop and it seems to be about 10 to 20% of the body weight drop so I don't know if there's anything significant bear but maybe it's not actually that's when someone can tell that they lost away that's yes that's fascinating that you say that because I I have no doubt that it's probably the just noticeable significant difference okay there's a point at which they realize no I'm definitely different and I'm definitely have now moved to a different level of attractiveness and and this is definitely working so you know two days and losing four or five pounds of water weight isn't going to be a great victory but ten days when were they've lost 17 pounds it's like wow there is a big difference in my morphology and so the confidence then appropriately has risen a great deal and so a lot of the anxiety has dropped so you can think of this as anxiety and confidence are very often essentially opponent processes they're there literally think of someone who's very confident you're thinking that okay their anxiety is very low okay think of somebody who's very unconfident you're thinking of other anxiety is very high the amount of the anxiety is a is a matrix of not only the confidence level but also what's at stake but you can imagine that what's at stake with someone who's flies a thousand miles to come to your fasting facility and is is telling us that they're worried about their overall help but really they're also very worried about their weight and they're worried that they may never be able to get a handle on this and that they're so frustrated and they may feel their relationships are being threatened or that they're you know various kinds in or that certainly they can tell that their self-confidence in their self-esteem is is under quite substantial assault so when they come there they can be quite anxious but that we can see that even at the beginning they're not sure that they can do it and they're not sure if it's going to work for them because God knows are they really sure that it's going to actually work and when it does and it works you know very well then the relief is huge the confidence goes to an appropriate level and therefore the anxiety now drops because because the confidence is greater and the issue on the table so significant that the the emotional change that takes place as a result is very evident and that's what you've observed oh that's wonderful thank you for explaining that it's it's really nice to hear it in words yeah running a lab experiment than having the professor say well this is this is what's going on Nessa and it's very yeah it's nice to know it's very lawful okay because the machinery of the mind the computations and therefore the the motivation and emotional processes are lawful and so this is these are the laws that they work by the more confidence you are the less anxiety you have the the more important the issue is you can imagine that if the issue is life and death and your confidence is 98 percent it's still you've got some serious anxiety okay that's that's like you know what I'm pretty sure we're fine but it's it's still 2% that we're gonna we're gonna buy the farm so we would expect anxiety to be pretty high even out of 98 out of 100 if our life's on the line but if it's but if our confidence goes to 90 percent that we can get a weight problem at a control that that is you know and it and it started at 20 percent and now it's a 90 percent or it started at 20 percent and now it's 60 percent the the surge of relief behind that increased confidence yeah it can be huge in terms of reducing anxiety mm-hmm now I remember seeing this a lot of turn orth when I was working there but I see it long more here because of one invention that was there that was there now that it wasn't there when I was at or north which is FaceTime so people will all the people in their life their family members or friends and the people will remark oh my god you look so much different it's like somebody who hasn't watched the process you know everyone's sitting you know doing fasting together so they can't really see their own transformation but right their friends and family do yes that's fantastic I was actually wondering about that because I know that you know the wait slips away and you wouldn't necessarily you could sort of tell but yeah that's fantastic so FaceTime winds up being giving a few snapshots over time and those snapshots show the stark relief from from time to time to the observer that's fabulous Nathan that's just there's almost you know what it almost suggests it's not a bad idea wouldn't be the worst idea for people to take to take pictures of them daily well I encourage a sir yeah so they can look yes actually see yeah yes oh that's good good thinking great work good-good biofeedback mechanism excellent mm-hmm all right dr. Lee you have time we have time for one more the one on the mild depression line one more one more okay so our next question actually is now it's in the same continuum but now we're going a little bit in the other direction which is about depression so mm-hmm dear dr. Lyle if mild depression is an uncomfortable feeling that prompts us to evaluate our behavior in some cases which would be a positive move to make if we need to make adjustments how would a more serious form including suicide be evolutionary beneficial is this a helpful response gone awry due to more than tolerable social conditions and do you think we have more depression today than in previous decades centuries or civilizations no I don't think there's any more depression today the the evidence would indicate that it's probably less people are happier now than they were 50 years ago in the United States the now my people might say really nobody I know but the truth is that you have to look at huge you know sort of base rate data you have to do big data analysis and there's people in wealthier societies or happier people in poor societies I don't care how much they smiled at you when you were in Machu Picchu the truth is they were smiling at you hoping that you'd throw them from a quarter okay so the poorer people are surprisingly not as miserable as you'd think but there's a reason why why that's true which is because they're actually competing with each other for sexual resources and it doesn't take a lot of resources to do that so as long as you can survive the next problem in biology is reproduce and if everybody is on a similarly meager playing field then it's okay not too bad okay whereas so we would we know that if we in their circumstances in our society it would completely rule you out of all kinds of social processes if you're a male you're just completely out of it in the in the mating arena you've got to have some kind of resources and if you're a female you can't even feed your children about level essentially so but when we transpose our thinking and observe people in other societies that have so much less we're thinking that this is a horrible situation when and in fact it is not it's no more horrible than you going out with a group of people in camping with very little other than enough food to get by and you're looking at the Stars and you you stay out of the rain and you tell stories around the campfire and then you try to get laid okay well that's what they're doing so it's really it's really not that much different now however it turns out that more material wealth makes people more secure less anxious happier and gives them more options to actualize all the potentials that sit inside their nervous system for enjoying their life so wealthier is better people and therefore we are also better off today than we were 50 years or 100 years ago in the United States and the average net happiness the average individual in the United States is higher than it's ever been so that's how that works and that's true around the world as as incomes and security Rises the now so we are not less happy but now now the question is about about as the person said well mildly discomfort is such a signal of a problem with the you know with the persons in you know relationship to environment well so is in a cute one okay so what at what point does this become a quote dysfunctional signal and my answer would be I don't think it does so if you're a little bit depressed it's signalling that you had a mild disappointment that you thought you were going to get X and it turned out you got Y instead and Y is less than X and you're not very happy about it and you know you you just got a a poor you know where you got an average on your abilities in your job for your annual review and you were expecting above-average and you're kind of unhappy about it okay the next level would be your girlfriend just found somebody else and they were falling in love with them and these they're so sorry so sorry so sorry but she's gonna leave you and you were planning on marrying her well that's worse okay so we're a hell of a lot less you know happy ie much more depressed about that than we were about a moderately poor job review okay so alright let's keep watching that now let's talk about you know something else that could be worse hmm got a diagnosis of cancer and it looks pretty dicey they think they may be able to to fix it but they're not sure so sure that they can and you're 43 and you got a couple of kids and now what uh-oh pretty disturbing a lot of anxiety and some dark thoughts okay so where does it magically come become dysfunctional well in the third case the the concern and even depression is driving you to analyze every cost benefit carefully the major issues in your life that you may need to reorganize in terms of priorities and so the the entire experience as unpleasant as it is is is part and parcel of a major of a major analysis of all your assets and your liabilities and your responsibilities as you think through what's in your best interests and then try to figure out what on earth you're going to do with it with a hand that is very depressing too to look at now the so now let's go one step further let's go to someone who's so depressed and strop that the contemplating suicide okay two things should come to mind well first of all let's try to think about I'm sure I've talked about this earlier in probably podcast 64 God knows where it is but suicide is an adaptive mechanism this is a genetically built-in system the and one might say how could this possibly be and the reason is is that you are designed by nature to survive and reproduce in order to increase the likelihood of what's called gene survival that is your biological purpose and that is your programming that means that you happen to be very concerned about your genes that are located inside of other bodies so for example that's why you care about your children so much if you have children because your children are the vehicles by which your genes are going to get into the next generation the and so it's also going to be true that you're essentially your life is as a member of a gene team it's even though you are a unique individual point of consciousness that will never be repeated that you are living your own life and and much of that life this is so low internal experience the truth is is that mathematically and biologically you're kind of a member of a team and your your objective is to optimize the team even though you don't quite see it that way necessarily and you can't quite grasp it that is in fact what's taking place that's why you're more likely all things being equal to loan $5,000 to your brother then your best friend okay now you might say I'm not so sure depends on your brother yeah it does in other words but all things being equal I said all all things equal of likely to get paid back all things being equal that it was going to be used wisely all things being equal that it that you know etc all things being equal that they're brothers just as stant just as a stand-up guys your best friend but he's your brother so he's going to stand up even faster for you than your best friend would why Hamiltonian genetic dynamics this is just straight this is straight straight Selfish Gene so the so what suicide is is to suicide is going to be suicidal ideation is going to be related to thinking through whether or not your gene team is better off without you and so people will have a lot of suicidal thoughts when they they are picking up cues and calm calculating from the environment that their Jean team may be better off without them and so and it could be the case folks in other words that that might be true and so we'll see that a lot of suicidality happens in in much later life when particularly when people may feel like they're draining the family resources and they feel like they have nothing to contribute ie just they're not getting any signals of love from people and they're not getting any signals that people need them for anything and so and they may be in pain and they don't have any resources and it's requiring money for their daughter their adult daughter to to take care of them and to get help for them and that takes money out of their grandchildren's mouth and education and futures and everything else so that you can see under those circumstances which are heartbreaking to contemplate that such a person might be thinking you know that bit that a circuit could say hey are we more trouble to our Jane team than we are benefit and it runs a cost-benefit analysis just like it does with all other behavior okay and if that cost-benefit analysis comes up and says you know what I think we're more costs than we are benefit then you could expect that suicidal ideation could become profound then what we tend to see is something else we will tend to see that those individuals will then run a lot of times trial balloons so they may make an attempt or make a lot of noises they may cut themselves so that other people can see it even though they may hide it in the modern environment but they couldn't have hidden it in a Stone Edge they may do things that signal to their environment that they're in real trouble and that we they then see what the market response is now if the market response is to throw a blanket of love around them in ways that convince them that they're extremely valuable then we're likely to have that be a transient process but what if they don't okay so what what if we essentially threaten suicide what have we held a suicide party and nobody came what if nobody cared okay well don't think that that isn't going to impact the analytics so when people are you know either isolated there's no Jean team for them to contribute to we have no way of getting esteem signals from other people where they feel like they're a drain on their gene pool these are all things that swirl around and will increase the likelihood of suicide I've been directly associated with two suicides in my career in both of those cases both pretty shocking both of those cases the individuals definitely believe that they were drains on their gene pool it's very clear that that's what they were thinking the and there's there's been other serious attempts that I've been aware of in in those cases people generally are feeling like they just don't see how they can you know that that's a major theme that you will see this was first brought to my attention in the work of David buss who I don't know if he did this directly or he was reporting on it I can't remember but I you know he's basically said listen suicidal ideation doesn't come from nowhere it's clearly there's clearly a reason for it and I think that if we look down through it we're going to see we're gonna see an evolutionary logic to it now that doesn't make doesn't mean that it's not often a horrible mistake that doesn't mean that somebody who gets to that point has an attempt fails that the attempt survives and you know essentially completely turns their life around and has a tremendously productive life so it doesn't mean that if they if they committed suicide quote it was the right thing to do but what I'm saying is is that the only reason why that's in there is because believe it or not it might be the right thing to do for the best interest of their genes and so that that's why that would be in there the reason why I'm gonna we're saying this is that we're basically saying listen this is a human universal okay this is like sneezing is a human Universal this is clearly this wasn't invented in I don't know you know upstate New York or in Seattle no this is everywhere around the globe for for as long as we have recorded history so clearly this is a natural human characteristic and it's a natural human characteristic that takes place under certain conditions and then that those circuits get activated and we may observe the behavior as rare as it is we may then see the behavior okay so so the the notion of the questioner is you know is this something is this something as some line get crossed and something you know like suicide mean that it's just all haywire no it doesn't it means the person's life is is you know got some tragedy to it that they are confused about their situation they don't know how to move forward they don't know how to how to chisel out more success or to be a greater contributor to their team and so they're in trouble and and this may be obviously I don't think there's any doubt about this that certain personalities are going to be much more susceptible to making this inference than others ok so there's going to be a major genetic component it's gonna float its way through this but that would be true with anything ok so there'd be a major genetic component to you know who would be more likely to bungee-jump than someone else so just as you're more likely by genetics to have accidents car accidents or any other kind of accidents you're also more genetically likely in some cases to be suicidal but that doesn't mean that the this the bath pool thing is any is any sort of bizarre dysfunction in the modern environment or anything else these are ancient circuits that are designed to go off under certain conditions and will more likely go off under certain individuals under those conditions than others and but it's all part parcel of the same general process of depression which is that we're getting a lot of negative feedback from our environment about our struggles to compete and to contribute
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